Anti-statism and the trajectory from the Revolutionary Communist Party to Spiked

This chapter explores the history of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the transition of many of its leading members into Spiked, via the magazine Living Marxism, between the 1980s and 2010s. Originally a far-left Trotskyist group, over the course of the 1990s, the party's outlook changed towards contrarian libertarianism. After its dissolution in the late 1990s, those who moved on to Spiked developed a political outlook that chimed with sections of the populist right, which has become particularly prominent in the last decade. This chapter will argue that underpinning this transition en masse from the far left to the populist right is an anti-statist politics. However, this has moved from an opposition to state intervention by the capitalist state that was structurally racist, sexist and homophobic to an opposition to state intervention in the belief that the state is pursuing a 'woke' and elitist agenda. As the contributors to Spiked become prominent figures in the media and political landscape, a knowledge of its history and origins are key to understanding how their political positions are developed in the present.